There goes my social calendar

Even though my name is Robert, not Roberta, and even though both my physician and my pharmacist seem to be able to recognize that I am male, the pharmacy’s computer system doesn’t have a clue. As they say, garbage in, garbage out. You want proof?

Yesterday I picked up a new prescription for an antibiotic because I am sufferig frob a code id da dose, and the following helpful “counseling message” was printed on the receipt:

WARNING: DO NOT USE IF YOU ARE PREGNANT, SUSPECT THAT YOU ARE PREGNANT, OR WHILE BREASTFEEDING.

Sure, I could just ignore information that obviously doesn’t apply to me. But then this post would never have seen the light of day, would it? And a man has to rant and rave about something, doesn’t he?

So I have tucked that piece of information away for future reference. Just in case I should ever need it, you understand. I can’t imagine when that might be, but these days a person can’t be too careful.

The healthcare game, how she is played

I was fortunate enough to have worked long enough for two large corporations to retire from both of them with full-service pensions, and in retirement, to be covered (at a price) by private healthcare insurance. That is, X dollars would be deducted from my pensions each month to cover the cost of health insurance premiums. Each company’s literature said it would pay 80% of my family’s healthcare costs, and I would be responsible for the remaining 20%. I also was fortunate enough to be able to retire several years before either one of us was eligible for Medicare. Had I retired prior to 1990, I would have received healthcare coverage in retirement from my employers without any monetary contribution whatsoever from me. To receive this wonderful perk all I needed was to have been born ten years earlier. Mrs. RWP, who was a registered nurse employed at a hospital before she retired, receives no healthcare coverage at all from her former employer, not because she is covered under my insurance as my spouse (she is) but because her former employer (did I mention it was a hospital?) offers no healthcare coverage whatever to its retired employees.

The company I worked for longest (let’s call it company A) was designated as my “primary” insurance, and the other company (let’s call it company B) was designated as my “secondary” insurance. So I thought (naively, as it turns out) that company A would pay 80% of our medical expenses and company B would pay the other 20% -- after all, 20% was far less than then 80% they said they would pay -- and any “out of pocket” payments from me (other than the monthly premiums, of course) would simply vanish.

Wrong, kemosabe.

We were informed by company B that since it covered the same 80% as company A it would pay nothing at all. I was still responsible for paying the remaining 20% of our medical costs.

When I/we became Medicare-eligible by virtue of turning 65, another layer of confusion came along. My “secondary” insurer (company B) became my “tertiary” insurer, my “primary” insurer (company A) became my “secondary” insurer, and Medicare (the U.S. government) became my new “primary” insurer through mandatory (translation: involuntary) deductions from my monthly Social Security payments. Medicare also became Mrs. RWP’s “primary” insurer through the same sort of mandatory (involuntary) deductions from her Social Security payments. The word “tertiary,” as far as I have been able to determine, is a word meaning “so far down the list in terms of payment responsibility that it has no value whatsoever and can be completely ignored from this day forward.”

I supposed that the portion of our medical expenses not covered by Medicare would be covered by my new-secondary, old-primary insurer. I am evidently a slow learner. Alas, it was not to be. It was “same song, second verse.” We were informed by company A that since it covered the same 80% as Medicare it would pay nothing at all. We were also informed by company B that since it covered the same 80% as Medicare it would pay nothing at all. I was still responsible for paying the remaining 20% of our medical costs.

In one eighteen-month period the two of us underwent one shoulder surgery for a torn rotator cuff, two knee surgeries to insert artificial knee joints, and two eye surgeries for removal of cataracts. Actually, all of that happened to just one of us.

In addition to being slow on the uptake in general, I was also slow to realize that the deductions for healthcare insurance from both of my corporate pensions were buying me exactly nothing. The bills from the hospitals, surgeons, ambulance companies, anesthesiologists, radiologists, laboratory work, and physical therapists for my 20% opened my eyes. A year ago I stopped authorizing insurance premium deductions completely from my two pensions and the money began going into my bank account instead.

At the beginning of 2009 we joined a Medicare Value Advantage HMO Zero-Premium something-or-other that became our “primary insurer” (it administers Medicare funds for the U.S. government) and things improved somewhat. The only healthcare insurance deductions we currently have are the Medicare premiums the government takes out of our Social Security payments, currently $96.00 per month apiece. That’s $1,152 per year from each of us, or $2,304 in all for two people.

Before this year, our five monthly prescriptions also took a chunk out of our income. Things have improved a bit under the new plan. This year, four prescriptions have been paid for in full, and a fifth one costs us $29.00 per month at the pharmacy. Beginning in January 2010, however, the four fully-paid ones will cost $3.00 each per month and the other one will increase to $39.00 per month. In addition, this year I was able to submit receipts for certain over-the-counter (OTC) non-prescription drugs like aspirin, acetaminophen, and a few other items and receive reimbursements of $12.00 each month. That stops in January 2010 as well. Everything considered, our personal outlay per month in 2009 was $17.00 ($29.00 for one prescription and a $12.00 reimbursement for OTC); in 2010 it will be $63.00 per month (four x $3.00 plus $39.00 plus $12.00 OTC non-reimbursed). My calculations say that is a net increase of $46.00 per month, or $552.00 per year. And this is before any of the increased taxes to pay for the proposed new healthcare legislation even enter the picture. Fortunately, Congress decided to cancel a planned annual increase in Medicare deductions for 2010. Unfortunately, Congress also decided to cancel an increase in Social Security payments. You win some, you lose some. We will have to come up with an extra $46.00 every month, beginning in January 2010, to pay for the very same prescription and non-prescription medicines we took in 2009.

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. Still, we have it better than a lot of people.

We were also notified by the Medicare Value Advantage HMO Zero-Premium folks that as of January 2010 the dental portion of the insurance will cover only “routine” items such as periodic X-rays and cleaning. Coverage for fillings, root canals, and extractions will cease. So the pendulum, it seems, has begun a long swing in the other direction.

Only God knows where it will stop. I’m sure things will get a lot worse before it does.

This has been intended to enlighten any of you who suppose that everything will be hunky-dory, healthcare-wise, once you become eligible for Medicare.

I hate to burst your bubble, but somebody had to do it.

From the archives: Thanksgiving Day

Norman Rockwell said it much better with with paint than I can with words, but the familiar words of an old song are my prayer for America today:


BLESS THIS HOUSE

Bless this house, O Lord, we pray,
Make it safe by night and day.
Bless these walls so firm and stout,
Keeping want and trouble out.

Bless the roof and chimneys tall,
Let Thy peace lie over all.
Bless this door that it may prove
Ever open to joy and love.

Bless these windows shining bright,
Letting in God’s heavenly light.
Bless the hearth ablazing there,
With smoke ascending like a prayer.

Bless the folk who dwell within,
Keep us pure and free from sin.
Bless us all that we may be
Fit, O Lord, to dwell with Thee,
Bless us all that one day we
May dwell, O Lord, with Thee.

(copyright 1927 by May H. Brahe & Helen Taylor)

[This post was first published in November 2008. --RWP]

On starting Christmas advertising before Thanksgiving, er, Halloween, er, the autumnal equinox

It seems to get earlier and earlier every year, doesn’t it?

I always usually go through a pretty severe “Bah, humbug!” phase before getting into the Christmas spirit. I don’t like what “they” (the merchandisers) have done to Christmas, especially the part where we are supposed to feel pressured into buying ever more expensive gifts in order to keep up with those darned Joneses. Then I remember that God gave us the gift of Himself through the voluntary sacrifice His son made, and that Christmas is all about the Incarnation (God with us, Emanuel). So I usually get my head on straight by about December 23rd.

Before then, I don’t even want to think about Christmas shopping.

Update, 11/25/2009: P.S. - Silly songs about red-nosed reindeer and dashing through the snow and you better watch out, you better not cry, and winter wonderlands and such ought to be outlawed. (I'm really getting into my “Bah, humbug!” phase now.)

Guest blogger Billy Ray Barnwell shares financial secret

[Because I am very tired today from the long drive back to Georgia from Alabama (even though in certain places -- along the border, for instance -- the trip takes but a single step), I have relinquished control of the blog for one day only to my good friend, Billy Ray Barnwell, who promises me that all he plans to do is set you on the path to financial security by sharing some much-needed financial advice (and perhaps a few other thoughts as well) that will help you live prosperously in President Obama’s America, or as it used to be known, the land of the free and the home of the brave. --RWP]


Billy Ray Barnwell here, I would be the last person in the world to tell you how to run your finances, there are plenty of financial planners in the world willing to do just that for a fee if you are dumb enough to let them, but I do want to pass along the best piece of financial advice I ever heard or rather ever saw, we had stopped to eat at a Stuckey’s just off the interstate years ago on the way to somewhere, I forget where, we were prolly in south Georgia or deep in L.A. which in my part of the world means Lower Alabama and I was checking out the souvenirs on the way back from the restroom, you know the ones, the baseball caps with the Confederate flags that say “Forget, hell” and the sets of shot glasses with somebody else’s favorite college football team logo on them and the beach towels that say Harley-Davidson and the salt and pepper sets that look like little outhouses, stuff you cannot possibly live without, and suddenly I saw this plaque that you could buy to hang on your wall that said If your outgo exceeds your income your upkeep will be your downfall, the plaque said it I mean, not your wall, and I was dumbfounded, I had this epiphany just like O. E. Parker did when he was in the tattoo parlor in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Parker’s Back” and saw this Byzantine Christ tattoo whose eyes said to him GO BACK, boy I wish I could write like Flannery O’Connor, either her or Pat Conroy, his prose flows and hers shocks, I guess if I had to pick just one it would be Flannery, but unfortunately the only way I know how to write is like me, anyways I knew I had to have that plaque, I wanted to buy it so bad I could taste it but I also knew we couldn’t afford it even though it was only $9.95 because we had saved for months just to make that trip to wherever it was we were going and we needed every penny we had for food and for gasoline to get back home on, so I did the next best thing, I committed that saying to memory instead, who needs a plaque on the wall when it is emblazoned in your heart is what I say, so for years that saying has been my watchword, well more of a goal I would have to say, as there have been many times when my outgo did in fact exceed my income and I was very much afraid that my upkeep was indeed going to be my downfall but somehow we always managed to make it through to the next paycheck, thank you Jesus, it’s always darkest just before the dawn is what my stepmother used to say, not the thank you Jesus part, that was me, and she would still be saying it too only she passed away last November in Texas at the age of eighty-nine years, seven months, and twenty-eight days, not that anybody was counting, and she was right, about the darkness and the dawn I mean, because dawn always came and that black cloud would somehow have a silver lining and life would go on, except of course for her it didn’t as of last November, but you get what I’m saying. It’s funny how at the most unexpected times I get a flashback to a story I’ve read or a movie I’ve seen, the movie Field of Dreams has that effect on me because my Dad moved from LaCrosse Wisconsin to Cedar Rapids Iowa when he was in junior high school, he joined the Navy from Iowa, he and I were such different people, we never threw a baseball to each other on more than a couple of occasions, he was always working at the factory and I was always reading a book or practicing the piano, I was never very good at sports but I did love baseball and except for the minor detail that I couldn’t hit, couldn’t catch, couldn’t pitch, couldn’t throw, and couldn’t run, I could have played baseball, I always rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers whenever they ended up playing the New York Yankees in the World Series, so I was drawn to a movie like Field of Dreams, I become a blubbering idiot every time I see it, Udella Mabry’s cousin Darlene Abernathy says well why do you watch it then and I really have no answer except that something grabs me in the pit of my stomach every time Kevin Costner which is pronounced Kevin Costner finally has that encounter with his father, the person he could never communicate with, and his father, who has been dead for many years but looks as young as or maybe even younger than Kevin, thanks Kevin for building the baseball field and says “It’s like a dream come true” and then asks “Is this Heaven?” and Kevin looks around at the baseball diamond and the cornfield and says “It’s Iowa” and his father says “I could have sworn it was Heaven” and Kevin says “Is there a Heaven?” and his father says “Oh yeah,” and after a short pause in which you can tell Kevin is thinking “What’s it like?” his father says “It’s the place where dreams come true” and Kevin looks around at his house and his wife and his daughter and says “Maybe this is Heaven” and he and his father finally have that game of catch and up on the front porch of the house Kevin’s wife throws the switch and the baseball diamond is lit up in the growing darkness and the camera pans back and up and you see all these hundreds of cars with their headlights on making their way in the twilight to the baseball field all because Kevin heard the voice saying “If you build it he will come” and “Ease his pain” and “Go the distance” and went to see James Earl Jones as Terence Mann and then the both of them went to see Burt Lancaster as Archie “Moonlight” Graham who gave up his heavenly baseball career to save Kevin’s daughter from choking to death on a hot dog and by this point I have been reduced to a puddle on the floor thinking about what never was and what might have been and what part of the fault was mine, Virgil Abernathy says he can tell from all the time he spent in rehab that I am way too involved with that movie, I’ve never been in rehab but he is prolly right, some other movies I especially like include Dances With Wolves which also has Kevin Costner in it, some parts are almost like looking at a painting in a museum, parts of the movie I mean, not parts of Kevin Costner, oh and there’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Some Like It Hot and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Prince Of Tides and Out Of Africa and of course the incomparable Casablanca, and if you ask me, which I know you didn’t but I’m just saying, the motion picture industry is in a great decline nowadays with the notable exception of the three Lord Of The Rings movies, and I guess I got a little off-topic, but if you have any questions for me, I will try to answer them, and this is Billy Ray Barnwell signing off.

Almost as ubiquitous as the phrase "Oh, My God"...

(which we discussed at length in this post) is a single word that continues to emanate from the mouths of Generation X, Y, and Z'ers everywhere, even though most of them should have long since left behind the ranks of the terminally impressionable and entered adulthood, taking their rightful places in the world of consumerism, materialism, and participation on such television programs as Color Splash and My First Place and Extreme Home Makeover: Home Edition and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader? that distribute goodies, monetary and otherwise, to which they feel entitled.

What was I saying before I so rudely interrupted myself?

Oh, yes. A word. That word is: "Awesome!"

Absolutely everything nowadays, it seems, is awesome.

An iPhone is awesome.
The dollar menu at McDonald's is awesome.
Your new recliner is awesome.
The color of your neighbor's new car is awesome.
Twitter is awesome.
Your parents being old enough to qualify for Medicare is awesome.
Those new shoes you bought today are awesome.
Being able to get away to the beach this weekend is awesome.
The fact that hot dogs were on sale at the supermarket is awesome.
Your favorite carbonated beverage is awesome.

Are you kidding me?

Let's start a campaign to reserve the word "awesome" for things that truly deserve it. Here are a few candidates for your consideration:

A sunset.
A brand new baby.
The ________ Mountains. (fill in range of your choice)
The Grand Canyon.
The night sky filled with stars.
Thunder and lightning.
Niagara Falls.
The Great Barrier Reef.
The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me sitting in the wilderness.

Someone is saying, "Well, maybe not that last one."

Hold on there. Not so fast. The author of the Biblical book called Proverbs had some definite thoughts on the subject:

"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four things which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." (Proverbs 4:18-19)

Now, those are awesome.

My English blogger friend, Mr. Yorkshire Pudding, recently traveled from his home in Sheffield, Leeds, halfway 'round the world to visit Chile, Argentina, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island to you) and fulfilled a lifelong dream of his. Undoubtedly he has added a few new items to his list of things that are truly awesome, like moai and Aconcagua. And, unlike most of those Generation X, Y, and Z'ers I mentioned earlier, he is right. [A correction: I should have said "Sheffield, Yorkshire" and not "Sheffield, Leeds" -- thanks to YP himself for pointing this out in a comment. --Yours for accuracy in media, RWP, 17 Nov 2009]

But I want to suggest to you, my faithful readers, that the most awesome thing of all is the love of God. I know some of you don't believe this, but I must say it anyway; it is part of the contract. Probably the most well-known verse in the Bible is John 3:16; the evangelist Billy Graham used to quote it all the time: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Trust me, that is awesome. Why should God love us? Some of us are real stinkers. Some of us do far more harm than good. Some of us kill one other and boast about it. But God loves us enough that His Son died to save us, voluntarily. The best human analogies I can come up with are organ and tissue donors, who give part of their own bodies to save others, and firemen, who go into burning buildings to rescue the human beings inside. They are awesome, and ought to inspire eternal gratitude in the rescued. But Jesus Christ gave Himself to be crucified to save us, and Father God brought about his Resurrection as a stamp of approval.

It isn't even Sunday, and here I am preaching. Some would say I've quit preaching and gone to meddling. Please forgive me. Here's a group singing a song that says what I'm trying to convey better than I possibly could.

The Gaither Vocal Band

What do you know! Here they are again!

And some of you may be asking, "Why should I love God? What has He ever done for me?"

Keep thinking. It will come to you.

I am in shock

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times, which does not, the last time I looked, have a conservative editorial policy, I am in shock as a result of reading the following story and seeing the photographs that accompany it:

Brace yourself before clicking here.

Maybe that doesn't bother you, but it bothers the heck out of me.

I'm all for showing respect, but that goes just a bit too far.

Oh, and thank God for a free press.